


a date to remember

by fluffysfics



Series: dimensional horror love stories [5]
Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Dr Nyarlathotep, Eldritch Doctor, F/M, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, Mugging Gone Wrong, Rated M for some violence, hey kids don’t accost eldritch horrors in the street, lightly Eldritch Master
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-04
Updated: 2020-10-04
Packaged: 2021-03-07 17:02:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,349
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26821081
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fluffysfics/pseuds/fluffysfics
Summary: Out on a date on a perfectly nice planet, the Doctor and the Master run into some...trouble, in the form of a mugging.The thief gets a bit more than he bargained for, and the Master discovers some new powers.
Relationships: Thirteenth Doctor/The Master (Dhawan)
Series: dimensional horror love stories [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1895128
Comments: 7
Kudos: 49





	a date to remember

It was supposed to be a nice, normal date. A walk down some pretty old streets on an Earth colony planet with lots of nice architecture, so that the Master could admire it, and the Doctor could ramble about it and run her semi-present limbs over the stonework. 

For a while, it had been lovely. She’d been telling him about this particular offshoot of humanity called the Shoomans, and all of the intricate designs they carved into their buildings, and how everyone _thought_ the designs were meaningless but they were actually an alphabet that could be read by touch, and wasn’t that _cool_ , Koschei, and- and—

The Master knew the sound of a gun cocking. Not his weapon of choice, but he’d had them pointed at him plenty of times. Next would be the feeling of a cold barrel against the small of his back, or maybe his head. But that didn’t come. 

Instead, the Doctor squeaked softly, and a voice behind him spoke. 

“Hand over your money or your pretty little girlfriend gets it.” 

The Master saw red. 

He’d been angry before. Plenty of times. This regeneration had practically been born angry, and he’d stayed that way for so many wasted years. But this anger was different. This _consumed_ him; it was cold and black and _different_. He could feel something happening, his whole body prickling with pure, unbridled protective rage. 

He spun around, grabbing the man by the throat so fast that the hapless thief didn’t have time to pull his trigger. Then the Master was shoving him down- not onto the floor, but...but _through_ it, somehow, through the floor into a space that was icy cold and dizzyingly bright, heat and darkness assaulting him from every angle. 

“You’re lucky I don’t take your gun and shoot you myself,” the Master growled. He still had the thief by the throat. He looked to be in his thirties, wearing a black mask to hide most of his features. The Master wrenched it off, and the expression of pure, unadulterated fear on the man’s face sent a smug thrill right through him. Maybe he wasn’t so lucky after all. Maybe a quick shooting would have been preferable. 

“What _are_ you?” The thief had closed his eyes, and he was shaking like a leaf. Maybe that was the cold, maybe he was just scared out of his wits. Either way, it wouldn’t do. The Master wanted his eyes to be open, and suddenly they were, and immediately they started to water. “Don’t- don’t make me look, don’t make me, what are you, _please_?” 

Hmm. What _was_ he? The Master shoved his way into the man’s head, accessing his visual centres, and- oh. _Oh_. 

His form was blurred around the edges like it was barely holding together. Two pitch-dark, skeletal wings arced out behind him, his eyes a solid, glaring black. He looked like the Doctor, barely holding on to his Gallifreyan form. He looked _good_. 

“I’m the man who’s going to end your life,” he purred, because he never could resist a good dramatic cliché. The Master dragged himself out of the man’s head, and glared down at him, rage still burning in his veins. 

“What are you?” Something seemed to have gotten stuck in the thief’s head, because he seemed to be repeating that over and over, still shaking. Oh, brilliant. He was _really_ scared. The Master could sense his fear, feel it, all sharp and metallic in the air. It was...physically changing the colour of the air in here, actually. Fear, it seemed, was a bright, vibrant blue. 

“That’s none of your concern, sweetheart.” He patted the man’s cheek, and then fixed a powerful hypnotic gaze on him. “Now... I think you should tell me how you’d _least_ like to die, so I can arrange you a nice surprise.” 

The thief fell silent, straining with the effort of not talking. A vein pulsed in his forehead; his eyes twitched and bulged. 

“ _Tell me_ ,” the Master insisted. 

A flash of red streaked through the blue in the air- before the Master could so much as flinch, there was a gun in his face, inches away, and an impossibly loud _bang_. 

And then...nothing. No pain. He blinked, surprised, and found a bullet frozen barely a centimetre from his nose. He...he hadn’t done that. 

“No one shoots _my_ Koschei.” The voice came from behind him, and it was the Doctor’s, but...different. His eyes widening, the Master turned around, and saw possibly the most incredible thing he’d ever seen in his lives. 

The Doctor’s Gallifreyan form was visible, in the same way that the beams of a car headlight were visible through a rainstorm. It flickered and flashed, the expression on her face one of grim determination. All around her, limbs flared wide- they switched between wings and tentacles so fast that it was almost impossible to tell which form was which. 

The Master stepped towards her, and let out a shaky laugh. “You’re _beautiful_ ,” he breathed. “Stunning. Hot. Would it be inappropriate to jump you while you’ve frozen time mid-attempt on my life?” 

The Doctor didn’t say anything- just stepped forward, and squashed him in a crushingly tight hug. The Master returned it, willing all of his apparently lengthened phantom limbs to wrap around her just as warmly as his arms. 

“You _disappeared_ ,” she said softly, sounding a lot more like her normal self now. “I was worried! You worried me! And then I tasted the air, and I knew you’d gone to- to _my_ dimension. It’s dangerous here, Kosch. I know you look a bit bigger here than you do in the usual dimension, but- but look! We’re not alone here.” The Doctor drew away from the hug, and pointed. 

Maybe two hundred metres away, a flock of balls of black smoke were roaming across the ground. Lightning arced between them, and the Master swore he could hear faint singing coming from the very _air_ surrounding the flock. 

“Time’s not frozen for them,” he observed. 

“Time doesn’t work in this dimension. It’s not real. So I froze normal dimension time, just the little tendril of it that’s reaching in here, which he and his _gun_ are still connected to.” She wrinkled her nose distastefully. One long tentacle reached towards the frozen thief, nudging the bullet out of the air, and then picking up his gun and hurling it into the far distance. It sailed out of sight behind a large black hill that appeared to be rippling. 

“Stars, you really _are_ hot when you’re like this...” The Master was vaguely aware that he shouldn’t be considering pausing this little revenge session to snog her, but he couldn’t help himself. 

“Save that for about five minutes from now,” the Doctor said, giving him an infuriatingly short kiss and then pulling away. “We have something more important to deal with.” 

She stepped towards the thief still frozen on the ground, and her limbs dissolved into smoke- a thick black fog swirling with rainbows, like oil. The fog surged to envelop the man, and then there was a sharp sound, like a tuning fork being struck, and time unfroze. 

Scared humans did an _awful_ lot of screaming. The Master supposed it probably was quite shocking, to go from shooting your attacker in the face to suddenly being suspended in midair by an even scarier attacker, with no noticeable passage of time. 

Curious, he ducked inside the black fog. It felt warm to him, and soft, familiar. Quintessentially the Doctor. A few small tendrils formed out of it, fondly caressing the sides of his face and neck. 

Their thief was suspended uncomfortably in the fog, all of his limbs twisted to their limits without breaking. He was still shaking, absolutely terrified, and the Doctor was glaring at him. 

“How many people have you robbed?” Her voice resonated with power again, and it was the sort of voice that made it ridiculously hard not to jump her right here. 

“Four hundred and eighty six,” the thief said, and then looked down at himself, terrified, as if he had no idea why he’d said that. 

“And how many have you killed?” 

“Twenty eight.” 

The Master could feel the Doctor’s anger in the air. He stepped closer to her, and she glanced at him, her gaze softening for a moment. 

“Kosch. He almost shot you in the face, you decide what to do with him.” 

Oh, he had a million ideas for _that_. He grinned, his smile positively vampiric. “Four hundred and eighty six victims. Make him feel their fear. All of it. All at once. And those twenty eight he killed? Being shot _hurts_. I think he should get to feel that, too.” 

The Doctor stepped forwards in the fog, her eyes glittering black, shifting and swirling with rainbows. “Yeah, that‘s good enough punishment. But not here. This dimension’s all full of life! Don’t want him sitting around here screaming up the place.” 

She rested her hands on the thief’s forehead, and the Master could _feel_ the transfer of power, her will supplanting his. Like his own hypnosis, but _brutal_. She was so powerful. He really shouldn’t find it as attractive as he did. 

Then, before the screaming could start, the Doctor drew back, and made a bubble with her hands around him. The instant she completed the circle, the man vanished completely. 

“Where’s he gone?” 

“Pocket dimension,” the Doctor said cheerily. “He won’t be robbing anyone again. Now. You. C’mere.” 

The Master stepped into her arms, and let himself be wrapped in an even more fierce hug than before. The black fog surrounding them had mostly retreated, but there was a bit left, lending a pleasant warmth to the air. 

“Don’t ever scare me like that again,” she mumbled into his shoulder, one finger poking him resentfully in the side. 

“Don’t go and get any guns pointed at you and I won’t have to,” the Master retorted. She laughed, and squeezed him tighter, to the point where any human’s ribs would have cracked. 

“You look nice,” she murmured. “All big. I don’t reckon it’ll last when we leave here. But wings suit you. Can you do tentacles, too?” 

The Doctor pulled back from the hug, watching him hopefully. Never one to disappoint, the Master concentrated, feeling the faint prickling shift as his extra limbs transformed. 

She gasped delightedly, reaching out to touch a tentacle, then gathering up a handful and burying her face in them. It felt _odd_ , but...a good sort of odd. 

“You’re warm,” she declared a moment later. “Kiss me again. ‘Cause you’re also really pretty with tentacles. Big ones. Not that you’re not pretty with small ones. You’re just always really—“

The Master cut her off with a kiss, tangling his limbs around hers, closing his eyes and pressing close enough to hear the Doctor’s hearts beating. One of his real hands went into her hair; pulling it, stroking it, showing his appreciation and his fascination and his _love_ in any way that he could. 

Her limbs encircled him completely, warm and tight, and he could feel a few sneaking up under his shirt. He hummed against her lips, approving, arching into their touch-

And then something bumped against his leg. 

The Master jumped, drawing back abruptly from the kiss. He kept one arm around the Doctor, the other ready to throw a punch if something decided to bother them. At first, though, he saw nothing. 

Then something bumped him on the leg again. He looked down, and saw...one of the smoke balls from earlier. This one wasn’t any more than half a foot in diameter, far smaller than any from the herd they’d spotted. 

The Doctor gasped, and bent down, holding out her hands. The little creature immediately trundled onto them, and the air filled with a faint chirping noise, gaining a slight forest-green tinge. 

“What’s this, Theta...?” 

“She says she’s off on an adventure,” the Doctor said delightedly. “And she saw us, and she likes us.” 

“You can speak to it?” The Master blinked. The smoke ball chirruped, and hopped from the Doctor’s hands to his shoulder. It was...warm. Kind of soft. Like a ball of fur. 

“Yeah! I’m from here. It’s a good language. Anyway, can we take her home?” 

He blinked. “Can we _what_?” 

“Take her home! Look, if she doesn’t like our dimension, we can bring her back. But I want to take her home.” 

The Master stared at the creature on his shoulder. It shouldn’t be possible for smoke to look hopeful, surely. But this thing managed. 

“Oh- fine,” he said, hoping he wasn’t going to regret it. The smoke ball chittered, and jumped into the crook of his elbow. Fine. _Fine_ , it was kind of cute. 

“Great!” The Doctor beamed at him, and grabbed the front of his shirt, pulling him into a kiss. “I’m gonna get us back now. And then we’re going to set up a nice room for Angie here—“

“Angie? You named it?” 

“Course I did,” she said cheerily. “Anyway, we’re going to set up a nice room for Angie. And then...” She lowered her voice. “Then, I’m gonna show you how much I appreciate you saving me like you did. Which is a _lot_ , by the way.” 

The Master perked up considerably at that. “I think I’ve got a fair bit of appreciation to show you, too, love.” 

“ _Brilliant_.” The Doctor grinned, and pulled him closer, and the world dissolved into a swirl of colours as she steered them back home. 

The Master had been expecting a nice, easy day out, a chance to go on a romantic walk with the person he loved. He had _not_ been expecting a robbery, or the torturing, or this new pet, or the very exciting promise of some very good sex when they’d gotten everything else sorted out. 

But nothing with the Doctor was what he expected, these days. Generally, things were a lot _better_ than that, and he didn’t think today was any different. 

**Author's Note:**

> this is a bit darker than most of my Eldritch fics, so I hope y’all enjoyed it anyway! also, please know that I’ve only had Angie the smoke ball for 12 hours and I’d already die for her
> 
> comments and kudos very very much appreciated!! <3


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